Terms of Use (DRAFT)
Draft only. Written by an AI, not a lawyer, and not legal advice. A South African attorney must review and finalise it before it is published. Clauses tagged [LAWYER] most need a lawyer's decision. Anything in [BRACKETS] is a fact the owner must supply. Last updated: [date].
1. Who we are
1.1 Paperiser is run by Paperiser (Pty) Ltd ("we", "us"), registration number 2026/814779/07, registered in South Africa, at 164 Voortrekker Road, Maitland, Cape Town, Western Cape, 7405. Our sole director is Sicelamandla Zikhali. VAT number: [VAT NUMBER, if registered].
1.2 Email: contact@paperiser.co.za. Telephone: +27 68 282 8301. Address for legal papers: 164 Voortrekker Road, Maitland, Cape Town, Western Cape, 7405.
1.3 "You" means the person or business using the website https://paperiser.co.za or the Paperiser command-line tool (together, "the service").
1.4 [LAWYER] The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (ECTA) s43(1) lists what a seller must show on its site: full name and legal status, physical address and telephone, website and email, registration number, office bearers and place of registration, address for legal service, a description of the service, the full price, payment method, how to access the terms, and the return and refund policy, among others. We checked this against the 2002 Gazette copy only. Amendments were not checked, and whether s43 applies to a free service is unverified. Clause 1 is written to cover it either way.
2. What the service does
2.1 You upload bank statement PDFs (ABSA only today). We read them, check the balances, and give you an Excel or CSV file.
2.2 You may also upload invoices, receipts and supplier statements. We check each document's own arithmetic and suggest which bank payment each one belongs to. You confirm or change each match, then download a workbook.
2.3 We are not a bank and are not connected to any bank.
2.4 We do not promise that a particular bank or statement layout is supported, or that it stays supported. Today only some ABSA layouts, in digital (text) PDFs, work.
3. Agreeing to these terms
3.1 By using the service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use it.
3.2 [LAWYER] Whether "by using this site you agree" binds you, or whether you must tick a box before uploading, is a lawyer's call. ECTA s11(1) says a data message is not without legal force merely because it is electronic. That does not settle how acceptance must be shown.
3.3 You are at least 18 years old, or you are using the service for a business and have authority to bind it.
4. What you may upload
4.1 Upload only documents you are entitled to use. Statements and invoices contain other people's information, such as people and businesses you paid.
4.2 You promise that you own the documents, or that the owner has given you permission to upload them.
4.3 If you use the service for a business, you are responsible for getting any consent or giving any notice your own customers, suppliers and staff are owed under the law (including POPIA, the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013).
4.4 Do not upload anything you are not allowed to hold or share.
5. Outputs are suggestions, not advice
5.1 What we produce is a suggestion. It is not accounting, tax, legal, audit or credit advice.
5.2 We check balances and totals. Our software can still misread a document or suggest the wrong match. A passed check does not prove the output is right. A failed check is a warning.
5.3 You must compare the output with your original documents before you rely on it, file it, sign it off or give it to anyone.
5.4 The service never decides anything for you. You confirm or change every match.
5.5 Do not use the output alone to make a decision with serious effect on a person, such as a loan, a tenancy or employment.
6. Acceptable use
6.1 Do not:
- overload the service, or get around its rate limits or captcha;
- scrape it or use bots against it;
- copy, decompile or reverse engineer it, except where the law lets you;
- upload malware or anything meant to harm the service or others;
- use it to deceive a lender, landlord, employer or anyone else with altered or forged documents;
- use it for card testing or other fraud;
- build a screening or credit product on it without our written approval.
6.2 [LAWYER] The last item anticipates possible landlord and lender products. Credit-reporting and automated-profiling rules (POPIA s57 and s71, mentioned in the earlier checklist) may apply. We did not research the National Credit Act.
7. Availability and changes to the service
7.1 Using the tool to convert and match documents is free. Optional accounts and prepaid credits are described in clause 15. We provide the service "as is" and "as available".
7.2 It may be slow, wrong, down, changed or stopped at any time, with or without notice.
7.3 We do not save your statements or documents. If you close the tab, your choices on the page are gone unless you save them yourself. If you have an account, we keep your email address and your credit records (clause 15).
8. Our responsibility to you
8.1 To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, lost data, tax penalties, interest or fees, or loss caused by a wrong or missed reading of a document.
8.2 To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising from the service is limited to the greater of R1,000 and what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.
8.3 Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit, including liability for our gross negligence or fraud, and any right you have as a consumer.
8.4 [LAWYER] The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA) may limit or void some of 8.1 to 8.3 and may require risk-limiting terms to be pointed out. It may not apply between businesses (juristic persons) above a size threshold. We could not read the CPA text, so these points are unverified. The lawyer must decide the cap, the carve-outs and the wording, and whether a tick-box or notice is needed.
9. Indemnity
9.1 If you upload something in breach of clause 4 or 6 and we suffer loss or a third-party claim, you will compensate us for that loss and our reasonable costs.
9.2 [LAWYER] Whether an indemnity is enforceable against a consumer, and how far it should go for business users, is a lawyer's decision.
10. Intellectual property
10.1 We own the service, its software, design and name. You may use it as these terms allow, and nothing more.
10.2 You keep ownership of your documents and of the outputs we produce for you.
10.3 We get no right to your documents beyond processing them to answer your request. We do not use them to train any model.
10.4 [LAWYER] Ownership of the code (assignment from the authors to the company, and parts written with an AI assistant) is unresolved in the earlier checklist. It affects what we can promise in 10.1.
11. Privacy
11.1 Our privacy notice at https://paperiser.co.za/privacy explains what we receive and why. It forms part of these terms.
11.2 In short, your files are processed in memory and are never written to disk, a database or a log. If you sign in, we keep your email address, a sign-in cookie and your credit records. Our hosting provider keeps basic request records for about 30 days.
11.3 If you upload personal information of others, clause 4 applies.
12. Other companies' services
12.1 The service runs on Google Cloud (Johannesburg), uses Google Firebase to send and check sign-in links, passes through Cloudflare, which also runs the captcha check (Turnstile), and uses Paystack to take payments. Your browser may contact these companies when you use the page.
12.2 They have their own terms and privacy practices, which we do not control. The privacy notice lists them.
12.3 [LAWYER] Whether the Cloudflare hop is a transfer to a foreign country (POPIA s72) and whether operator contracts are needed (POPIA s20-21) is open. Clauses 11 and 12 must match the lawyer's answer.
13. Stopping and suspension
13.1 We may block or suspend you, or stop the service, if you break these terms or abuse the service.
13.2 You may stop using it at any time. To close an account, email contact@paperiser.co.za. We will delete your account details, except the payment records the law requires us to keep. Unused credits are dealt with under clause 15.6.
13.3 Clauses that by their nature should survive (liability, indemnity, IP, governing law) do.
14. Changes to these terms
14.1 We may change these terms. The new version applies from the date shown at the top.
14.2 We will update these terms before we add any new paid feature, new stored data or new way of charging, and before it starts. Using the service after a change means you accept it.
14.3 [LAWYER] Is posting a change enough, or must existing users be told or asked again?
15. Accounts and credits
15.1 You can use the tool without an account. You can also sign in with your email address (we send you a link; there is no password). We plan further paid features, for example business workspaces and optional language-model reading of invoices, and will describe them here before they start.
15.2 Your account. Give us an email address you control and keep your sign-in link private. You are responsible for what happens under your account. You must be 18 or older. One person's account may not be shared or sold.
15.3 Credit packs. You may buy prepaid credit packs. The price in rand, including VAT, and the number of credits are shown on the page before you pay. You pay on Paystack's page; we never see your card details. Credits are added when Paystack confirms the payment, usually within a minute.
15.4 What credits do. Credits are a prepaid balance for the paid features of Paperiser, not money, not transferable and they earn no interest. At the moment no feature uses credits. Before any feature costs credits, we will say how many it costs, and we will not take credits for a feature you were not told about.
15.5 Expiry. Credits do not expire today. If we ever introduce expiry we will give at least 30 days' written notice and it will not affect credits for packs bought before the notice.
15.6 Refunds. If something went wrong with a purchase, write to contact@paperiser.co.za and we will put it right. You may ask for a refund of unused credits within 30 days of buying them; credits you have already used are not refunded unless the feature failed to work. This does not limit rights you have under law.
15.7 If we stop. If we close the service we will refund unused credits to the payment method used, or give notice and a reasonable time to use them.
15.8 [LAWYER] ECTA s43(3) lets a consumer cancel within 14 days if s43 is not followed. ECTA s44 gives a seven-day cooling-off for some services, but s42(2)(d) excludes services that begin with your consent in that period, which may apply to consumed credits. CPA rules on renewals and fixed terms are unverified. All of this needs a lawyer before payments.
16. Governing law and disputes
16.1 South African law governs these terms.
16.2 Please contact us first at contact@paperiser.co.za and we will try to settle it.
16.3 Disputes go to the courts of the Western Cape High Court, Cape Town, and you may also use any right you have to complain to a consumer or regulator body.
16.4 [LAWYER] Venue, whether arbitration is wanted, and whether a consumer can be bound to a venue.
17. General
17.1 If a part of these terms is found unlawful or unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
17.2 These terms, with the privacy notice, are the whole agreement between you and us about the service.
17.3 If we do not enforce a term at once, we have not given it up.